chowmama
chowmama's JournalChanges to our meal plans caused by the reich wing in Doge and the WH.
Our SS arrives on the second week of the month. We now can't count on it. So, until it arrives, there will be no restaurants, no fast food, and fairly frugal meals using some of my stored food, augmented by whatever seems affordable from the store. Or possibly affordable home-cooked store food, augmented by stored food, depending on how the tariffs affect prices. I'm not optimistic. Portion control will also be in effect. It'll be good, and tasty, and we won't starve. I'm pretty prepared for this.
If it arrives in April, we can go back to normal until May 1. Then we hunker down and wait to see if the May check arrives. And so on. If/when it doesn't come, we'll just have to stay hunkered until the resulting rebellion convinces these assholes to back down. SS (and Medicare/Medicaid) aren't called the third rail of American politics for nothing. There'll be hell to pay.
We had a 'farewell to restaurants' blowout on Saturday. (Sawatdee in Minneapolis.) I'm going to miss these places. And I know they'll miss the money. So will the stores. I wonder how many of them will survive this period. I wonder how many of them voted for this.
My only comfort is that the assholes can't possibly survive the 2026 election. If they don't back down, they'll be voted out by the supporters they shafted. If they do back down, they'll lose the cult. They don't have a big enough margin to survive losing either, and they've made damn sure the two groups won't be able to coexist in the same party.
Baby steps
Belle's next checkup happened yesterday. She has a palpebral reflex (she blinks when the corner of her eye is touched) and she can close her eye completely at will and when she's sleeping. A couple days ago, I saw her at the couch, wanting to get up on it. She looked, crouched, did a couple of rear leg pushups to prepare herself - and arced onto the cushion. She stuck the landing. I was so proud.
But her left eye still isn't producing any tears and there is now a greater than 50% chance that the tears will never return. On hearing this, DH had a mild hissy fit. (He still feels guilty, as if he could have prevented the accident, which is completely crazypants).
I'm afraid I reacted badly. I informed him that this kitten is Lazarus - it's almost impossible odds that we didn't have to euthanize her because she wouldn't stop seizing or because her lack of mobility made quality of life unacceptable. If she comes out of this and all I have to do is apply eye lube twice daily, I'M FINE WITH THAT! None of this was his fault. It's already a miracle and she may still win the lottery and recover completely.
I might be a little bit stressed.
I think my opinions lack a certain 'prestige' at home.
I've been explaining to DH what I'm doing (stocking up, keeping on top of the bills and budgets, etc.) and why right along. He's disagreed politely through it all. Now we've never felt we needed to agree on everything, but the constant response of "That won't happen" and "I think you're wrong" in the face of a constant barrage of news stories that might just indicate that precautions were a good idea has been a little worrisome. To be fair, he's never told me to stop - he turned all the financial and planning stuff over to me over 3 years ago and he doesn't want it back.
So, what happens last night? Some mention of something on G-D Saturday effing Night you've-got-to-be-kidding-me Live got him waking me up from a sound sleep to discuss his sudden concern. Not concern, really - panic. How the hell were we going to handle this? I assured him that I'd been working on it since the 2nd week of November and that we were probably in as good a shape as possible under the circumstances. As long as I keep my job, we can function.
I went back to sleep after a while. He was up scanning the internet till 4:30 AM. He's not completely calm yet. Actually, neither am I. But I haven't been for months, so I've built up some tolerance.
But really - SNL???
Belle is slowly improving
She gets her last meds tomorrow. Her left hind foot still drags a little; you can hear a quiet scrape of the nails on the floor as she walks, but she's placing all her feet appropriately. She runs, she handles stairs ok, if slowly. Eating, drinking and using the litter pan like a champ.
Her left eye still can't close, but is moving more and more in that direction. There's a lesion (break) on the surface of the cornea that still needs to heal. She gets eye lube ointment to prevent any further damage until she can blink and while the healing happens. We hope this will be a temporary condition. If it's permanent, it's not the end of the world to keep applying the ointment.
She is a different cat, though. She seems much older. Before the accident, the world was safe and pain-free. Suddenly there was pain and confusion, and she's no longer the fearless fireball tomboy. Still sweet, but different. The other two cats, including her mother, can't figure out what's going on and why the dynamic has changed. I believe they recognize her, but are spooked enough to want her to stay away from them. We have to stand guard when she's roaming the house. It may take a few weeks for them to accept her again.
This is a months' long process. Nobody, including me, thought she would come back this far and she's not done coming back yet. She's a bloody miracle.
Baby Belle used up another life this week.
Before I proceed further, it's going to be important to note that it's going to have a happy ending. Eventually.
4 days ago, I was at work, DH was home, all the beasts were doing their normal beast stuff. DH suddenly heard shrieking from the kitchen and rushed in to find Belle on the floor, thrashing around. As he told me on the phone, there was blood everywhere. He wrapped her in a towel and got her up on the table to keep her under some control. I got home and we got her back to the clinic pronto. There were laws broken.
Work knew we were coming and snapped into action. They were amazing, did all the right stuff, and we got her stabilized, diagnosed and treatment begun. Somehow, she'd suffered the kind of head trauma that comes from a fall from very high, higher than a counter. We can only think she was trying for the refrigerator or had achieved the fridge and tried for the top of the cabinets. In any case, she didn't land on her feet and the force of the fall had split the roof of her mouth slightly - that was the source of the blood. She was seizing initially and had significant neuro signs.
She stayed at work and I stayed with her, both working and monitoring her. That night, we took her to the emergency clinic to continue fluids, drugs and seizure watch overnight. She couldn't get up or walk, everything circled and bent to the left, her left pupil was the wrong size, and I could go on. By the next afternoon, she could roll up on her chest, marine crawl with her front legs (the back legs weren't working at all) and was more responsive. She came home with us.
Her schedule is now to be at work with me during the day, where I can monitor and care for her. At night, she comes home and the care continues. She's on meds and when she's not sleeping in a lap, she's safe in a large plastic tote that she can't get out of. She's improving gradually every day. She started walking somewhat normally night before last, although she fell over every few steps. By today, she's walking better and falling less; unfortunately, that means she wants to wander the house again, so the tote is necessary when I have to do other things. She was being syringe-fed because she was too uncoordinated to eat on her own; I tempted her with a shallow dish of half-and-half this morning and she managed to lap a little for the first time (and dunk her nose and sneeze, as well). By tonight, I fed her a syringe of water, a larger syringe of kitten pate, and presented a dish of the pate. She managed almost a tablespoon of it on her own. (Another water syringe to finish.)
This is going to be a long haul. It may be months before she's recovered as much as she's going to and nobody knows exactly how much that's going to be. But she's young and strong and given how things are going, we're already certain that she's going to have a very good quality of life.
And if she ever does anything like this again, I'll kill her. (Not really.)
I was trying to explain to DH what I think is going to happen with housing, owned and rental, in this current insanity.
I think he’s finally listening.
First, we’re deporting a lot of people. They all lived somewhere. Then there’s the number of people who are losing their jobs due to Douche. The tariffs are also going to force a lot of workplaces to close or cut way back because they can’t afford or simply can’t get the tools, parts or supplies they need to operate. We can't make them here without building the facilities that will need the imported machinery and supplies to get started and that process takes years anyway. More jobs lost.
People who aren’t working won’t be spending, so there goes retail. People who depend on Social Security and the other safety nets also won’t be spending. As retail fails, more jobs will be lost. People who lose their jobs often lose their homes. Go figure.
So, with a lot, and I mean a lot, of empty units, housing and real estate values are going to eventually plunge. Now the banks get involved. I remember this from the last recession. Your property goes underwater and you owe more than it’s actually worth. Often a lot more. They’ll start calling in the loans to be paid in full and when you can’t do that, they’ll foreclose.
And who can pay their loans in full at a moment’s notice? Our economic experts and entire economic structure insist that you be mortgaged to the hilt. You were supposed to buy or build the biggest house that anybody would loan you money to afford. (Hello, McMansion!) Same with cars. No debt, no credit rating. And I’ve personally sat through 401k investment meetings where the speaker told us it was crazy to spend money paying down debt when you should be investing it instead. One stopped me personally after the meeting because I’d stopped paying in and I pleasantly told him that none of his funds were paying anywhere near the interest on my loans. I was actually money ahead paying off my debt. He smiled and walked on. Research is a bitch.
Of course, now the stock market is tanking. Goodbye, 401k. At least it wasn’t a lot of money.
All of these foreclosed homes? Now empty. And we take another circle around the drain. Rinse, repeat.
I think we’re headed for a full-fledged depression, lasting a number of years. I hope I’m wrong.
More fun with the old cookbook, and using up things.
The pantry had a little over 8 oz of pitted prunes. DH wanted them at one time and actually ate a few, but better than half the carton has been just sitting there for way too long. The only way I'll eat them is if I have to, in a kolache, hamentaschen or some other pastry, and even then, I prefer poppyseed. Still, the prunes had to go.
Rombauer had an interesting-sounding recipe for a spice cake flavored with prune pulp. Ok, I'll give it a shot. First, I stewed the prunes, added a little sugar (which I'm not really sure was necessary), cooked them a little longer and put them through a food mill. This gave me a prune jam which is...not bad, actually. Apparently, it'll last a while in the fridge, too.
Then the cake. I followed every direction to the letter, sifting cake flour into the measuring cup and then again with the other dry ingredients. Butter or shortening was 1/2 to 1 cup and I used the lesser amount of butter. Everything else per the directions (the butter, sugar and eggs beaten until almost white), and the batter tasted quite good.
Baking went awry. There just isn't enough structure for the weight of the other ingredients. Also, I elected to try them as cupcakes for portion control and there's too much batter for a pan of 12 cupcakes. They have crispy edges (I was worried and actually scorched a couple making sure the middle was done), but the body just gives way under the weight of the top.
Still, the flavor's great and there's a lot of promise here. We're eating them upside down, holding onto the crispy edges and eating the soft parts first, but DH keeps saying how good they are. I'm going to have to work on this. I could make several batches, adding progressively more cake flour but that seems wasteful.
So next time, I'm using all-purpose flour, same volume measurement, but more heft. (The sifted cake flour came in at 3.2 oz per cup, and I usually figure all-purpose for 5 oz per cup.) If that's too bready, I can sift the AP flour pre-measure for a little less weight on a third try. I'm also going to default to a 13x9" pan. The recipe allowed for 2 layers, 1 deep layer, or a tube pan and later referred to a loaf, so there's wiggle room.
But now I have to buy more prunes. That wasn't the idea.
Audrey (Furball Mama) has been spayed
And microchipped. No more birthing kittens on cold construction rubble under porches for her. Baby Belle will be scheduled for next month.
She came home mid-day yesterday, still drunk/loopy/liquid. They'd never have let her go so early if I wasn't a vet tech. I spent the afternoon on cat watch. She slept most of it, but needed watching whenever she woke up and decided she was able to manage stairs. Or couches. Or litter pans. By evening, she was mostly coordinated. But she was definitely pain-free.
She is, however, a Houdini when it comes to her cone collar. She pays no attention to her incision site, which is impressively keyhole and has no visible sutures. I'm letting it ride for now, but am inspecting her several times a day. As long as she keeps it up and the site continues to look good, we can continue this way. If she starts in on her site, all bets are off. I'll put her in plate armor if I need to.
I tried canning beef last night
Brisket, to be specific. This is my first attempt. I trimmed all visible fat. Used the directions for raw pack and packed it loosely, per the instructions I had. I figured that since I'm getting 1.25 to 1.5# of boneless chicken per quart jar, it would be about the same for beef,
I guess not. The 2 jars are only half full, so they're half full of air. The other half is meat juice and much-shrunken meat. They did seal, but this much airspace is supposed to be a problem for long-term seal life. I divided 3# of brisket between them and they looked full enough at the beginning. And there was no blowout; nothing in the kettle water and the jar tops were clean.
I went to my USDA book, and they say I should be able to get 3# per jar. I'm not sure how I can stuff that much into one wide mouth jar, but I'll try next time. Meanwhile, I'm opening one of the jars to see how tender it got and it's going to be Shepherd's Pie tonight. I have to start boiling the potatoes in a few minutes to mash for the top. If I don't like the beef, I'll use up the second jar soon, but I may not try again. If I do try again, I'll be canning 1.5# portions in pints. We're only 2 people and 3# of meat at a crack is just too much.
The other new try this week was the Rhubarb Cream pie from the 1943 Joy of Cooking. That's a winner. We had the second half for breakfast. (The recipe was for a 9" pie, but that was obviously too little filling for that size shell. 7" was perfect.)
Semi-historic food question
I'd been looking for a 1943 (not '46) Joy of Cooking for a long time because I'm interested in the period. I never expected to use it; just ro read it. I finally got one a few months ago.
It's wonderful. Every other JoC I’ve seen, including the modern one I was gifted, has left me completely cold. (Of my old cookbooks, it was Betty Crocker for preference and Good Housekeeping second, both from around the year of my birth). I cracked the 1943 edition open and, within a page or two, thought ‘Wow, this is how I cook’. And there are hacks for shortages and rationing. And I love the sense of humor and occasional snide comment. This is my JoC.
But there are some differences. Apparently, 7” pies used to be a thing. (Goodwill had one plate, so now I have it. And I'm going to use it this week.) I can figure out a lot of things on my own. For instance, dry vermouth is called 'French vermouth', sweet vermouth is 'Italian'. Some can sizes are different. A few products are just no longer available. And it tells you how to open-kettle can food, which is not, repeat not, safe.
But the biggest one is that she only refers to 2 kinds of white flour, cake and bread. No mention at all of all-purpose or plain flour. Is her 'bread' flour just flour that isn't cake flour? Some of the uses make me suspect this. But when did what we now think of as bread flour (higher gluten) become commonly available? It was invented by this time, but might have only been used by professional bakers.
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Member since: Sat Apr 9, 2022, 09:43 PMNumber of posts: 677